To tweet or not to tweet

The West Australian

Friday, 17 July 2009 5:27PM

Since its creation in 2006, Twitter, the social networking service, has taken the cyber world by storm.

At first glance it might seem like a glorified Facebook status, but Twitter is in a league of its own, connecting people with fast-paced updates. It has become more than just an outlet for status updates - it is a place for closet comedians, activists, celebrities, businesses and everyday people to let others know about videos, opinions, interesting news, advertisements - and, yes, what they are eating for lunch.

The phenomenon includes a host of new vocabulary terms and concepts that every self-respecting Twitter-er should know. Here's a crash course on everything Twitter, from basic terms to its impact on the news.

BASIC TWITTER TERMS

Twitter: n. a free social networking service that connects users through fast-paced status updates.

Twitter-er: n. one who uses Twitter (also known as a "Twit", especially in relation to celebrity Twitterers).

Tweet: n. short updates or messages, of 140 characters or less, which are posted on your profile and sent to your followers.

Retweet (RT): n. unofficial Twitter feature that indicates a re-posting of a tweet from another user. Often uses the text "RT username" (of the original source) before the post.

Follower: n. one who receives another user's updates on his or her Twitter profile.

: n. a public message from one user to another by using the "username" prefix before a tweet.

Direct message: n. a private message sent from one Twitter-er to another.

hashtags: n. a convention that adds context to tweets by putting "" in front of a keyword to link other users using the same keywords. Example: obama.

TIPS TO TWEAK YOUR TWEETS

So you've finally been swept up by the techno-tide and got a Twitter account. But what to write? Who knew 140 characters could be so overwhelming?

Darren Rowse of the TwiTip blog ( www.twitip.com ) recommends a two-step tweeting process: Figure out what your followers want, and then give it to them. Some combination of cool links, conversation-starting quotes or questions, retweets and photos works well, Rowse writes.

Keep in mind that Twitter doesn't directly offer photo hosting. You'll need to use a third-party site like TwitPic ( www.twitpic.com ) to upload your photos. Other sites, like TwitVid ( www.twitvid.io ) can be used to post videos.

If you're frustrated by the Spartan design of the Twitter web site, try a Twitter client - Tweetdeck (tweetdeck.com/beta) and the Mac-only Tweetie ( www.atebits.com ) are the most popular, and both also are available as iPhone apps.

Even without an iPhone, you can update your Twitter on the go. After adding your phone number to your Twitter account, you can text updates.

But no matter how you tweet, remember that people can see what you post, and Twitter might not be the best place to vent about your boss. Even if you make your Twitter private, your followers may not share your sense of discretion.

CELEBRITY TWITS

Twitter is teeming with celebrity accounts. The famous, who once shunned the media in their private lives, are posting everything on Twitter for all the cyber world to see, amassing followers in the millions. Who's leading the celebrity pack? TwitterCounter (www.twittercounter. com), a site that tracks the most popular Twitter users, lists Ashton Kutcher (username: aplusk) as the most popular Twitter-er with, as of our publication date, 2,691,112 followers.

Sure, their celebrity status is what got them followers, but it's their tweets that really make them popular. Here are a few celebrity tweets we found to be funny, interesting, silly, or all of the above.

Tweets range from the funny,

"Obama admitted to smoking. while we are admitting things I have a confession to make. I don't drink enough water" - Ashton Kutcher (aplusk) 4.28 pm June 23.

"ONCE WE HAVE LEARNED TO LOVE, THEN WE WILL HAVE LEARNED TO LIVE! and LAUGH" - Shaquille O'Neal (THE-REAL-SHAQ) 2.26 pm June 22.

Need a bigger celebrity Twitter fix? E! Online ( www.eonline.com ) has a constantly running "celebri-Tweet" feed to keep you up to date on the lives of the rich and famous.

BREAKING NEWS, ONE TWEET AT A TIME

In the wake of the Iranian presidential election June 12, some technophiles turned to a seemingly unlikely source for information and analysis: Twitter.

Although the microblogging site is perhaps best known for the short updates celebrities provide about their daily lives, Twitter is fast becoming a reporting service that cuts out the middle man - a direct line between sources and the public.

The Iranian election has appeared among Twitter's top tweet topics continuously during the past few weeks as users have used it to report information, discuss the event and organise protests.

The United States Department of State, apparently recognising the use of Twitter by protesters, asked the site to delay scheduled maintenance after the election, and Twitter complied.

Twitterers like persiankiwi, apparently an Iranian protester, have amassed thousands of followers by providing heartrending, first-hand accounts of the movement from the streets.

By tagging their tweets "Neda," Twitterers helped to elevate Neda Agha-Soltan, an Iranian woman killed during a protest, to martyr status after a video of her death surfaced on the internet.

Users also have used the site to thumb their noses at traditional media. As the Iranian protests geared up, Twitterers frustrated with CNN's lack of early coverage started tagging their tweets "CNNfail."

The complaints didn't fall on deaf ears. Tony Maddox, managing director of CNN Internation-al, said in an interview with London's Telegraph newspaper that the Twitter reaction made it clear there was an "appetite for more sustained coverage of what was going on in Iran, and that was what we did."

But Twitter didn't just burst onto the news scene.

One of the first widely distributed pictures of the US Airways flight that crashed into the Hudson River in January was posted to Twitter by a New York native aboard a ferry that assisted the victims.

And in November, Indian Twitterers used the site to spread information about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

It can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, however. During a one-hour period June 24, there were at least 4,876 tweets tagged as being about the Iranian election - more than one per second - and many were retweets or regurgitations of reports from mainstream news sources.

Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, it is difficult to determine who is an Iranian protester, who is an outside supporter of the movement and who is a government plant.

Still, for the patient user willing to sift through extraneous tweets, Twitter can provide a kind of on-the-scene immediacy that is hard to find elsewhere.